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Highways England said a ‘comprehensive’ review would be carried out after admitting lower limits were not always correctly set.

A spokesman for Highways England said: “We want to ensure that what drivers see also feels relevant to the traffic conditions, so we’ve improved the way we set message signs and signals on smart motorways and have started a comprehensive review of how variable speed limits are set, including the amount of time they are visible to drivers.

“Our initial analysis of actual traffic flows and changing the algorithms has already reduced the amount of time variable speed limits are on by 200 hours per week across the network.”

(Image: Handout)

Edmund King, president of the AA said: ‘”This begs the question of how many thousands of motorists have been caught out when they shouldn’t have been; when they were fined on roads with limits that were artificially set too low.

“This is an issue we’ve raised with Highways England because we have too many members saying they’re driving down an absolutely open road with 50 or 60mph speed limits on the overhead gantries.”

He added: “The fact is that cameras are really being used to replace police. The problem is that cameras don’t catch drink drivers; they don’t catch the middle-lane hoggers, they don’t catch the dangerous tailgaters.”

Since variable speed cameras were installed between junctions 7 and 9 on the M42 in 2013, 11,918 drivers have been caught exceeding the limit, which can drop from 70mph to speeds of just 20mph.